


Me and You

by Serie11



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, During Canon, F/F, Fluff, Food, Vala Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23259826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: When Vala mentions missing home, Aloy plans a surprise for her.
Relationships: Aloy/Vala (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43
Collections: All The Nice Things Flash Exchange 2020





	Me and You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Entwinedlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entwinedlove/gifts).



Vala slinks through the tall grass, keeping an eye on the striders in the clearing that she’s circling. There shouldn’t be any reason for them to be startled, since this isn’t very close to Meridian, but there could be a stray hunter about that isn’t her. Well, there is one stray hunter around – Aloy told her to meet up close by, but she isn’t worried about Aloy. Unless there’s a reason, Aloy won’t startle the herd.

She makes it to the cover of the trees. The camp site she’s headed to is just outside of the Jewel, and so she shouldn’t have to worry about any of the dangerous machines that reside within, but it can’t hurt to be careful. She’s still not used to all these machines just running about – in the Embrace, at the most you might see a sawtooth. Here, a bellowback, a stalker, and a ravager might all be within shouting range of each other. It’s better not to take risks.

Still, she’s been to this campsite before, and the machines seem to avoid it. She brushes past a few giant plants, and tries not to long too much for home. None of the wildlife, the plant life, the machines… none of it is the same as the Embrace. It’s been nearly three months since she’s set foot in the Sacred Lands, and she misses her home and her family and her friends. She could go back if she wanted, but Aloy wouldn’t come with her. And Vala doesn’t want to go back, not yet. There’s still work to be done out here, figuring out what to do about GAIA, how to defeat HADES, what their next move is going to be now that Sylens has apparently gone radio silent. Ugh. She needs to stop thinking about all this. She and Aloy have already gone over everything, and more than once. Chewing the same leather once more won’t produce any different results.

She spots the flicker of a campfire through the foliage and quickens her step, not trying to hide any more. Hopefully, there shouldn’t be any machines nearby. She lifts her head and takes a deep breath in – she thought she smelled Nora cooking, like they used to do in Mother’s Heart. She sighs. All this thinking of home has made her imagine things. Not the best thing for a hunter to do.

And so, she comes through the last of the trees into the campsite, and stops in her tracks.

Aloy is there with her back to her, crouching next to the fire. And over the fire is a whole boar – suspended by a contraption of metal and wire that Aloy must have put together herself. And Vala hadn’t been imagining the smell of home, because she can see that Aloy has made a wild ember and fire kiln root paste and has coated the boar in it.

“I didn’t know you knew how to make winter ember boar,” Vala says, resisting the urge to pounce on Aloy. “Did you make this for me?”

Aloy looks at Vala over her shoulder, hands deftly slicing a piece off the pork. “It’s almost done,” she pronounces, looking at the meat. “And yes, I made it for you. A few days ago you were saying that you missed Varl… I took that to mean that you were missing the rest of the Nora as well. And everything else.”

Vala busies herself around the camp, putting her pack inside the tent and organising all her weapons so everything’s in easy reach if she needs it. All the while, she’s wrestling with herself, the swell of her heart when she thinks about Aloy, and her longing for home. In the end, she simply decides to be glad. Aloy went to the trouble of making this for her, and it smells great, and she’s been missing good, honest cooking like this. Even though she misses everyone, she would be a fool to not appreciate the bounty that the Goddess has offered her, right here and now.

By the time she sits on the opposite side of the fire to Aloy, Aloy is carving meat off the side of the boar. She passes a bowl to Vala and Vala sits there and takes a deep breath, letting the steam and the smell wash over her. This brings back so many memories – of better days, when her mother was at home more often, and a permanent shadow of gloom didn’t hang over every Nora.

“Varl taught me how to cook it,” Aloy informs her, beginning to slice off some meat for herself. “When we went up to deal with the killers at Red Echoes. Even though I had won the Proving, been marked as a Seeker, a lot of the Nora didn’t want to talk to me. Thought that I was bad luck to be around.”

Vala says nothing. She knows the type of mindsets that Aloy is talking about, and they run deeper in the Nora than she might like to admit.

“Sona was busy organising everyone, but Varl came to my campfire. I’d left everyone else to make camp by myself, since I made everyone so uncomfortable.” Aloy shifts her weight, scrutinising the boar for any good bits she might have missed. “I’d shot a boar, and I was in the middle of skinning it when Varl wandered into my camp and told me he knew how to cook it.” She flashes a smile. “I’m glad I listened. This is one of the best seasonings I’ve come across.”

“The Carja spices sit uneasy on my tongue,” Vala agrees with her. She finally takes a bite, and resists the urge to moan. It tastes like home, and for more than one reason – someone she loves had made this meal for her.

“The Nora, the Carja, the Banuk… all of them have such different palates,” Aloy muses. She finally sits back and starts eating her own meal.

“This is really good,” Vala enthuses. “And Varl only showed you once?”

“More like he made me do it all for him,” Aloy says wryly. “But it engrained the process in my memory. I’m glad you like it.”

“It reminds me of the great meals we used to have, in mid-winter when the snowstorms would lash our cabins. Then everyone would gather inside and we would cook many boars saved for just this occasion, and the smell would linger for days.” Vala sinks her teeth in, swallows. “Next winter, you should be there with us. I’ll teach you all the songs we use to pass the time.”

“Huh,” Aloy says, as if she hadn’t even considered what she was doing for the next long winter season. “Me and Rost always bunkered down, but I kept myself occupied. Tinkering with my Focus and whatever metal I’d managed to keep around helped.”

“I’d like for you to be there,” Vala says softly. “And it could help with a lot of the other’s attitudes. They’re just not used to you yet.”

“You’re making an interesting case,” Aloy says, lifting an eyebrow. She looks down at her bowl, which is still half full. Vala has already finished her own, and is trying to not impatiently tap her feet while she waits for Aloy to finish. After all, it’s rude to take seconds when someone else still hasn’t finished eating their first serving. “I… I’d like to be there too.”

They smile at each other, and Vala notes the new lines on her face, the worry of the recent days showing. She’ll have to do something about that tonight. Something to make Aloy forget all about their problems, and to pay her back for thinking of her and going to the trouble to cook this meal.

“If the end of the world hasn’t happened, it’s a date,” Vala says, winking. Aloy throws her head back and laughs.

“You’re something else, you know that?” she chortles.

“Yeah, yeah, you love me,” Vala says. “Now hurry up and finish so we can have some more. There’s a whole boar there you know!”

Aloy’s eyes go crinkly and happy, and she obediently starts eating again. Vala thinks that she’s the luckiest person in the world right now, to have food in front of her and Aloy beside her. Together, surely they can make it through anything.


End file.
